With the development of industry, molding processes are widely used for manufacturing workpieces, for example, optical articles such as lenses and light guide plates. Such workpieces are needed to satisfy oft-conflicting requirements of compactness, low cost, and excellent quality.
In a molding process of the related art, the molding process utilizes a molding apparatus for forming a workpiece. The molding apparatus typically includes a first mold part and a second mold part, the first mold part and the second mold part each may have a mold core. Both of the two mold cores have a molding surface conforming to a surface of the workpiece. When the first mold part and the second mold part are brought together, the two mold cores are positioned opposite to each other by some positioning members, and thus a mold cavity according to a size of the workpiece is defined between the two molding surfaces of the mold cores.
Generally, the positioning members are required to match compactly with each other, or match directly and compactly with the mold core, otherwise a loss of precision such as concentricity may occur between the two mold cores. However, this leads to difficulty in assembly and disassembly of the mold cores, and abrasion of the positioning members and the mold cores may occur after a during use, and disassembly and modification of the whole molding apparatus are then needed, so a high cost can not be avoided.
What is needed, therefore, is a molding apparatus which overcomes the above-mentioned problems.